Newsletter Highlights

The most attractive aspect of a DIY, or Do It Yourself, is cost savings. Sometimes it’s a necessity, but there are a few things to consider before making that commitment. Hiring a professional architect, builder, interior designer, and tradesperson most often saves money in the long run.

When ready to build their dream home, people hire an architect to create their dream. Sometimes, they act as the general contractor managing tradespersons or they build it themselves. This might look great on paper and they know there will be headaches, but they will deal with that.

Does design stop at the blueprint or should it continue through to the end of construction? How crucial is it that a designer is readily available and on site to make sure all goes smoothly? All trades need to work together as a collaborative team to coordinate forms, shapes, colors, textures, and all finishes.

What happens when design changes need to be made quickly and there are cost-over-runs? An untrained and inexperienced person will make the best decision, usually on the fly. This can cause a warp in consistency of materials and colors. Oops. Now what? The budget is so tight.

It’s difficult for an inexperienced person to be the designer and to see the whole picture at once. Tradespeople are not trained to look at the big picture or consider aesthetics so they are often no help A DIY can easily cut corners reducing quality of home. A professional will make the home both aesthetically pleasing as well as functional

Another important aspect to consider is scheduling. Coordinating tradespeople and communication between all is tricky. The DIY client is at a disadvantage and has less leverage in scheduling or in price negotiations. They don’t know if they are getting a good deal or not. A professional has a reliable team in place making them first priority in scheduling and pricing knowing that future business is at stake.

Will the dream be a beautiful oasis or a regret that a professional should have been hired? Flaws will annoy you, be noticed by everyone, and lower the value of your home if you need to resell. Decorating is easy to redo. Fixing building mistakes are costly and time-consuming.

Stanton Architects, Inc. provides both design and build for the utmost in service. Contact the office at 815-741-0510 to get started on your dream build.

What ingredients are needed for the ideal work environment: unlimited private snacking, hanging out in your jammies all day, doing what you want to do, whenever you want to do it? That sounds like a recipe for working at home!

Oops, stop there.

Successful stay-at-home workers all agree these negative behaviors inhibit productivity. So, why work from home? Among the many reasons, avoiding commuting saves time and money. When building a new home or addition, it’s easiest to designate space for a home office. It is possible, however, to create a productive home office in just about any space. We don’t recommend busy areas like the bathroom or kitchen.

Interior designers tell you to chose an area and emphasize what that space is for. The use of a desk, chair, and computer is a good place to start. An ergonomic office chair will keep you comfortable. To encourage productivity, get rid of clutter, organize like-objects together, and make it light and bright. Proper lighting allows us to see better and natural sunlight lifts the mood. It’s also important to make it your own by choosing colors you like and adding décor that you love.

Recommendations to work successfully from home include:

Maintain a routine. Grooming, meals, exercise, and mental breaks are needed at the same time every day to operate at peak performance.

List daily tasks and stick to it before going to bed.

No family or friends are invited. This includes social media. Enforce boundaries.

Use technology to your advantage. A noise-canceling headset with mute button will keep distracting noise from barking dogs or emergency vehicle horns from distracting a business call.

The arch is a symbol of strength, but also of rise and fall. In stories, there are three types of character arcs ñ change, growth and fall. Thinking deeply about a storybook character’s journey reveals a hidden lesson about the narratives that make us human. That’s why a good story captures our attention. Oftentimes, a character starts off feeling certain, then an event triggers a massive shift.

Adventure can be exciting, or scary, depending on how we perceive it. Naturally, the change arc and growth arc inspire more thrill; the fall arc stirs depression. The change arc tells us of a “hero’s journey.” The TV industry can make millions off of a hero. For example, science nerd Peter Parker becomes the superhero Spiderman. Jack “The Pumpkin King” Skellington in “The Nightmare Before Christmas” finds true happiness only after learning from his mistakes, which heavily impact Sally and their beloved Halloween Town.

The growth arc paves the way for the protagonist to overcome internal opposition and face external opposition. Mr. Darcy in ‘Pride and Prejudice’ seems like the perfect man (in terms of etiquette, finances and physical appearance), but his pride repels love from his life. Yes, he’s handsome and comes across as mannerly in social situations (at times), but only through personal growth can he become a better version of himself. In the face of the witty, energetic Elizabeth Bennet, he develops into her ideal companion.

The fall arc is appropriately deemed a tragedy. This rise and fall unravels the character to his or her very core. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, for instance, desires to avenge his father’s death, an obsession which leads him down an unfortunate path ñ to lie and murder, haunted by his guilty conscience and finally to his own death by poisoned sword.

But here’s the positive spin on the arc. While a storybook or screenplay often follows this path, our lives are more complex. We aren’t characters in a story; we exist in a free-form world. Let’s embark on the countless arcs in our lifetimes. Our stories carry on through the lives we touch, the conversations we have, the things we create. In the big picture outside of the book margins and television screens ñ our lives are circular, and in some ways, never-ending.

Time is one of our few non-renewable assets so it’s critical to set rules for time management to be able to experience more of what you love and less of what you don’t.

Here are six easy-to-implement time saving strategies to consider…

1) Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers

Feel free to surprise others, but don’t be surprised. It just results in unwanted interruption and poor negotiating position. Let it go to voicemail and respond when you are ready.

2) Do not email first thing in the morning or last thing at night

The former scrambles your priorities for the day and the latter just gives you insomnia. Email can easily wait until after you’ve completed at least one of your critical to-do items.

3) Do not agree to meetings or calls with no clear agenda or end time

If the desired outcome is defined clearly with a stated objective and agenda listing topics/questions to cover, then your meeting or call will more likely achieve the desired results. Request an agenda in advance so you can prepare and make good use of the time together.

4) Do not let people ramble

Forget “how’s it going?” when someone calls you. Stick with “what’s up?” or “I’m in the middle of getting something out, but what can I help you with?”

5) Do not check e-mail constantly – “batch” and check at set times only

Focus on the execution of your top to-do’s instead of responding to manufactured emergencies. Set up appointments with yourself to check emails during the day. Two or three times a day is often enough.

6) Do not work more to fix overwhelm, prioritize instead

If you don’t prioritize, everything seems urgent and important. If you define the single most important task for each day, very little else will feel urgent or important. Oftentimes, it’s just a matter of letting a few small bad things happen (return a phone call late and apologize, pay a small late fee, lose an unreasonable customer etc.) to get the big important things done. The answer to overwhelm is not spinning more plates – doing more – it’s defining the few things that can really fundamentally change your business and life.

It’s hip to focus on getting things done but it’s only possible once we remove the constant distractions. If you have trouble deciding what to do, just focus on eliminating or minimizing things you should not be doing. Different means, same end.

“You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Square rooms.

They don’t listen.

They don’t care.

If a man is in despair.

— Lyrics of “Square Rooms,” by Al Corey

The Round Square in the U.K. is one of a number of buildings said to have been built to a circular plan so that there would be no corners for the Devil to hide in. It is now part of Gordonstoun School.

Is it possible that the shape of a room affects our thinking? The editor Julie Beck writes in the Atlantic that, among Western cultures, people are apt to see the individual as separate from the environment. Move to a different house, yet you are still the same person. But in South Asian cultures, she writes, “home isn’t just where you are, it’s who you are.” There is little doubt that people impact their physical environment, living spaces included. But what of the reverse?

Many people tend to want scientific evidence of any assertions (though it is seen as quite acceptable to ignore scientific evidence). But while there is no definitive answer to these questions, there is evidence of the ways that the physical dimensions of a space affects occupants.

Ancient peoples, and some of their modern day descendants, built round structures; the yurt, for example. This shape can be advantageous in highly windy places, as the air flows around the structure. There can be other advantages as well in terms of thermodynamics, efficiency, and acoustics.

Yet a discussion on the website Quora affirmed what anyone might guess, that square rooms and structures are preferred. This is especially true, said one thread, when there are several people, partly because of the round room’s magnification of acoustics! Other threads focused on the idea that square rooms are quick and easy to construct because of the linear nature of prevalent materials. They are also seen as accommodating furniture better than a round room would.

Round or square, other aspects of dwelling space affect the intellect: The psychologist Joan Meyers-Levy found that people in low-ceilinged rooms do better at solving anagrams with words like “restricted,” while those in high-ceilinged rooms do better with words like “freedom.” Ceiling height influenced thinking, she found.

Likewise, the author James Clear writes that, while researching the polio vaccine, an exhausted Jonas Salk retreated from his University of Pittsburgh lab to the Basilica of San Francesco d’Assisi in Italy. “White-washed brick covered the expansive exterior,” Clear writes, “and dozens of semi-circular arches surrounded the plazas between buildings. Inside the church, the walls were covered with stunning fresco paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries and natural light poured in from tall windows.”

Clear quotes Salk as saying, “The spirituality of the architecture there was so inspiring that I was able to do intuitive thinking far beyond any I had done in the past. Under the influence of that historic place I intuitively designed the research that I felt would result in a vaccine for polio. I returned to my laboratory in Pittsburgh to validate my concepts and found that they were correct.”

In conclusion, there is what has been proven and then, far more extensive, there is what we know.

The Beatles told us we can’t buy it, and Johnny Lee has us looking for it in all the wrong places. Yet love makes the world go round, even the business world, built as it is on relationships. Selling often seems to hinge on finding the customer’s “pains,” but what if it were possible to take the opposite approach and find out what our customers would love?

In “What Clients Love, a Field Guide to Growing Your Business,” marketing guru Harry Beckwith advocates asking customers what they want. Then, he says, do that.

We can imagine what that would mean because people like our vendors and healthcare providers count us among their customers. So we brainstorm around this question: What delights me as a customer? Possible answers: A product that more than meets my needs; someone going above and beyond what I’ve come to expect; the shop that takes returns, no questions asked.

Now that we have the mindset, the question becomes how to gather the information from customers. Big companies use surveys and focus groups, but there is one cost-free way that organizations of any size can use and that is to listen.

We may not be able to learn about every client this way, but we can start with individuals: “Who are they? What do they care about? What would help them sleep better at night?”

There may be inexpensive ways to better meet customer needs or exceed their expectations: A followup contact to ask whether a product continues to perform well or whether there are any questions since that legal service or medical procedure come to mind.

As trust grows, we can ask questions like these: “How could we make this product help you even more?” or this: “How can we be better?” Responding to customer ideas may or may not be costly in terms of time, money or other resources. We have to decide how to proceed.

These kinds of questions work equally well for the leader of a company, non-profit or government office as they do for an employee or a sales rep. Many of us face the more complex situation of having several “customer” groups: those our organization serves and those within our organization who look to us to get the job done, provide a paycheck or support others.

The “reach” is to then ask the big question: “What would you love for our organization to do for you? What small [or big] change would you love to see in this product or service?” An immediate thank you and an honest commitment to seeing what can be done may be all customers really expect from us even at this point. But what if we, once again, imagine? Only this time, we imagine being able to implement an idea that comes directly from a customer. We envision delight.

Chances are, the results will be something we can love, too, as clients come to see that we care about their experience, want to be better and can adapt. That makes us all “feel all right.”

Building projects 4,000 years ago were delivered by architects in charge, aka “Master Builders,” who carried out all responsibility for building. From the 20th century, the legal world crafted a new design/bid/build project delivery. Fortunately, as we move into the 21st century, owners realize this “new” concept of design/build is NOT new at all. Today, educated and savvy owners opt to go with design/build project delivery. It is an absolute must for cost and time-conscious construction without design compromise.

Operating a successful design/build business requires a person with a unique skill set-a rational and practical person who can be conscientious of design quality, construction methodology, and delivery deadlines, all at the same time. This person earns respect and confidence with their unquestionable reputation and deep knowledge of various building components and systems, and all aspects of the construction process. A reputable architect leading a design/build project is the best choice!

Project Delivery

• Design/Build

One Master Builder takes overall responsibility for project including design, bid, and construction. This is the best method for cost and time conscious construction without design compromise.

• Design/Bid/Build

Owner is in charge of design, estimates, and construction. Multiple parties are involved inherently resulting in miscommunications, compromised design and construction budget overruns.

Housing and health care professionals are abuzz about “aging in place.” The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines aging in place as “the ability to live in one’s own home and community safely, independently, and comfortably regardless of age, income, or ability level.” Adapting to change gets harder as we age. People are living longer and many desire to stay in their homes and familiar environment as long as possible. Whether building a new home or renovating an existing one, plans can be made to allow for aging in place.

See the list below for considerations to make when building a new home

open floor plan

wider hallways/doors

higher than usual electrical receptacles

counters with knee space

countertop space on each side of appliances

space for a large side-by-side refrigerator/freezer

raised dishwasher

5’ turning radius in each room,

bathroom walls reinforced for grab bars

adjustable height hand-held shower head

Some easy and inexpensive renovations to an existing home

improved lighting including motion-detectors

contrasting color palettes

lever door handles

remote controlled lighting/heating/cooling

audible and visual alarms

full-length windows near entrances

bench or table near doors

The owners of this home pointed out some of their favorite accessibility features in the kitchen: full size freezer, double pull out trash can, chair height warming drawer/double oven, and a wide pantry with adjustable shelves.

It is said that renovating a house to allow for the needs of mobility impaired persons will increase its property value by as much as 25%. These universal design costs will be minuscule if a need arises due to accident, health problems, or aging.

A hot new trend is creating a backyard oasis and entertainment venue. A proper design will use the entire backyard keeping a good balance with open area, landscape and hardscape, seating, food prep, play, and storage. Height is important in good design. Vertical structures like pergolas, gazebos, walls, counters, screens, planters, and playhouses lead the eye up and around the backyard filling spaces with a home-like feel. Don’t forget the power of lighting design: ambient, accent, and task.

Consider themed areas, like a yoga garden, kitchen, or bocce field. If relaxation is your goal, design a spa-like mood using the five natural elements in feng shui practice: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. The 17th century French writer, Francois deLaRochefounauld, said, “to eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art.” Food preparation and sharing a meal with family and friends is as important as what is eaten. What better way to burn calories after a satisfying meal than by moving? Are you interested in a game of mini-golf, chess or checkers on an in-ground board, or even volleyball?